McDonald's Billboards Take Pot Shots at Starbucks

McDonald's is taking jabs at Starbucks in new billboards erected close to the gourmet coffee giant's cafes and headquarters in Seattle.

Among the accusations the fast food chain is lobbing: "Four bucks is dumb" and "Large is the new grande," the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported.

"The billboard placement was done because we picked high visibility locations," Alan Finkelstein, who owns four McDonald's in King County, told the paper. "We really wanted to point out that ordering an espresso at McDonald's is quick and simple. Small, medium and large. It's easy."

Earlier this year, McDonald's launched a Web site called unsnobbycoffee.com to advertise the addition of espresso to its menu in the Seattle area.

In all, about 140 billboards that insult Starbucks have gone up in western Washington state. But the coffee company isn't jumping into the nasty fray.

"We're not going to get into that conversation," Starbucks Chief Marketing Officer Terry Davenport told investors last week in New York. "We're not going to get sucked into the, 'My coffee is better than your coffee,' price-point type of coffee conversation. We're going to play at a much higher level."